The plan had been to wait until I am home after graduation and then try it, but over spring break, I just couldn't wait.
I'd done some research, and it didn't look like a starter was that hard. So I threw together some flour, water, and yeast, mixed it up, added more flour and water every day, and then... it started forming this weird liquid. I stirred in the liquid and kept going.
Then I was browsing the bread subreddit, and someone was asking about their sourdough starter. One comment was "if it forms a clear liquid, dump it off, and then keep feeding".
"Oh, okay, I was wondering what to do about that" I responded.
"Yeah, it's alcohol made from yeast dying" they told me.
Cool, my starter was making alcohol.
I poured it off and kept feeding.
It didn't work.
I decided to make some bread with what starter I had available. The bread looked great, if not a bit flat, but tasted... weird.
As is often the case with my cooking, everyone around me loved it but I didn't - It was bread, and it was good bread, but it didn't taste right.
So I asked for help on the bread subreddit. And I was told - you did it wrong.
You aren't supposed to use yeast, they told me. You should start over. Maybe find a recipe that uses pineapple juice. And don't forget to discard half of it when you feed. (Whoops.)
I found a recipe and added pineapple juice to it. I bought some rye flour to start a stronger starter. At first, it worked beautifully. The rye starter began to overflow out of the jar. Then I switched to all purpose flour, like my recipe said I should do.
And suddenly it started fermenting again. No rise, just alcohol.
After a bit of research and some thinking, I discovered my problem this time was my flour - I was using bleached flour. You know what bleach does to things? It kills them.
Whoooooops.
So I contacted King Arthur Flour's live baking help chat, and explained the situation.
"Do you think I can remedy it or should I start over?" I asked.
"Is it pink?"
"No"
"Does it smell putrid?"
"No"
"Then you should be able to fix it!"
She gave me instructions and told me to expect results shortly.
I was even more careful. I drew sharpie lines on the jar to see if the starter was rising at all.
Surprise!
It wasn't.
I was told to wait for it to rise and then feed it before it starts falling.
How was I to do that if it wasn't rising?
I sent an email to the baking helpline. They told me to watch for bubbles, and to feed it before the bubbles died down.
I watched for bubbles, and it started to ferment before the bubbles changed at all.
By that point, classes had started and I didn't have time to worry about this anymore. I'd made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of flour trying to rectify them. (No flour actually got wasted, but I have a lot of dead starter I need to bake with now). I decided it would be better to start over, and start over when I'm at home and have better flour and more time.
And then I put the starter in the freezer to wait to be baked with. It's a good thing I like sourdough banana bread.
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If you'd like to try your own starter, I'd recommend checking out King Arthur Flour's blog. They have a post on starting a starter which is probably a functional recipe, and they also have a post on maintaining your starter. If you get stuck, they have live chat online and a telephone hotline to help you.
I can say for sure that they've made a customer out of me with their resources. And their fantastic flour.
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